


Five Miles of Bad Road

by helsinkibaby



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Het, Romance, tw: miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6556456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case in New Orleans brings the BAU into contact with an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Miles of Bad Road

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a very alternate reality season four, even if there's a certain head canon that I will always hold!

New Orleans looks a little better than Hotch remembers from two years ago. The same can be said of the police station they arrive at. It definitely, however, cannot be said of Will LaMontagne, which unnerves Hotch, because they’ve seen Will more recently than two years ago, and the man has never been anything less than affable, even when they were investigating the murder of one of his best friends, even when his life was falling apart around them.

The Will who barely shakes his hand, letting it go almost the second that they touch, is gaunt, unshaven, and his clothes look as if he’s slept in them for about three nights running. It could be forgiven as the stresses of the case, except for the case is a missing six year old girl; they’d got the call barely an hour after she’d been reported missing, and they hadn’t wasted any time getting on the plane.

Will shouldn’t look this shattered this early in a case, and even though Hotch pretends not to notice, he sees the looks that Reid, Morgan and Prentiss are exchanging, knows that not only have they noticed too, that they’re just as worried as he is.

Their frowns only increase when they hear a familiar voice, and turn, expecting to see JJ. Hotch doesn’t look, not at first, but then he sees the shock, quickly covered, from each of the team, and hears JJ’s greeting, stilted at best, he makes himself lift his head.

He sees JJ all right, but not JJ as he remembers her, the ball of energy, the consummate liaison officer, the assured FBI agent who ran their office for so long.

He sees a JJ who has lost weight that she could ill afford to lose, a JJ whose skin is pale and dull, with not a speck of makeup on it. A JJ with circles under her eyes, hair loosely tied back, a JJ who can barely look at any of the people she used to spend almost every waking hour with.

“Hello, JJ,” he says, and she looks across the room at him, holding his gaze, but only for a second.

“Hi, Hotch.” Then she looks away, finds Will. “These are the files you were looking for.” He takes them from her, and then it’s all business. Except that the whole time that they’re trying to nail down a profile of the kidnapper, he’s also watching JJ, trying to nail down a profile of her.

It should make him feel better to know he’s not the only one doing it, but it doesn’t.

*

He tries to ignore the rest of the team, their whispers and furrowed brows, the worried look in their eyes. He consciously stays near Rossi, who didn’t know JJ as long and thus is worried, but not as worried, as the rest of them.

He pretends not to hear Prentiss whispering to Morgan, “Did she talk to you?” and looks up just in time to see Morgan shake his head.

“I expected it,” the other man says. “I mean, she went through a lot…”

“I know that.” Prentiss’s voice is sharp. “But look at her… she’s got to have lost, what, ten pounds?”

“Try fifteen.” Hotch would have guessed closer to Emily’s estimate, but Morgan’s the one with the eye for the ladies, and if he says fifteen, then no-one’s going to argue with him.

“And even the job she’s doing… glorified clerk for the New Orleans PD?” Reid’s voice, frustration vying with worry vying with confusion, joins the mix. “Isn’t she a little overqualified for that?”

“She’s totally overqualified,” Prentiss agrees. “But one of the detectives told me that she volunteered for the job and they were delighted to have her. But he said she hardly ever smiles.”

Which Hotch knows is not JJ, not by a long shot, but then Rossi comes and tells him the missing child’s parents are there, and he goes to do his job.

*

Doing his job, however, involves walking the crime scene, and as luck would have it, when Hotch walks the park, Will LaMontagne accompanies him. The park where Lainey Jacobs was taken could be any park in any town in America; in fact, there’s one near Hotch’s old house where he takes Jack all the time. This alone would be enough to make Hotch uncomfortable, but the fact that he’s the only profiler here, walking the scene with Will as the only cop, makes it even more so. At first, he thinks his fears are unfounded, because Will, as ever, is nothing but professional. It’s afterwards, after he points out where the last known sighting was, details of potential witnesses, that he deviates from the case.

“She didn’t want you to come.” He doesn’t need to mention who he’s talking about, and the news doesn’t come as a surprise to Hotch. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear though. “I thought she was going to throw something at me when I told her.”

Hotch shrugs, trying to keep his voice and face neutral. “It’s standard procedure in a missing child case… JJ knows that.”

“Knowing and liking are two different things, Agent Hotchner,” Will tells him, with what looks very like accusation in his voice and eyes. “Next, you’ll try telling me y’all are surprised by how she’s acting.”

Hotch doesn’t need to be a profiler to know that’s definitely accusation and studies the park’s surroundings while he studies his response. He finally settles on, “It was always going to be hard for her to see us again… after what happened.”

“In New York.” Will’s voice is like iron now, but there’s the merest hint of a question in there too, and Hotch knows they are swimming now in very dangerous waters.

“In New York,” he agrees, hopes that Will will leave it there, knowing that the memories of New York and all that happened there are hard for Hotch as well. Will gained a fiancée and lost a baby in rapid succession, Hotch’s SUV got blown up and as well as his own injuries, he lost a friend who wanted to be more and almost had been. It’s not a time he likes to think about, but he’s honest enough to admit to himself that the fallout – JJ leaving for New Orleans – had been just as hard to bear, if not actually worse.

“She told me.” Those three words snap Hotch back to the present day, have him looking at Will with wary disbelief. “About the two of you,” Will continues. “That the baby might not…” He breaks off, voice choking up, and Hotch looks down, both to give the other man a moment to gather himself, and to give himself that same thing. Whatever Will might believe, JJ had never actually told him. She hadn’t had to; the moment that she’d told the team she was pregnant, the moment she looked in his eyes, he’d known. Everyone had heard him telling her, “You could have told me” but no-one had understood fully its meaning.

“It was just one time,” he tells Will quietly after a long moment. “And we were both very drunk when it happened.” All true – he’d just signed his divorce papers, JJ was still having a tough time dealing with some of their cases, he hadn’t known she was involved with someone, and somewhere between the first and fifth drink, they’d crossed a line they’d had no intention of crossing. They’d been less than careful, but he hadn’t thought anything of it, not until a New York hotel lobby and the look of carefully disguised horror in her eyes as she looked up at him, begging him wordlessly not to make something of it. He hadn’t either, he’d walked away and when she’d asked him if they needed everyone out in the field, he’d sent her into another man’s arms.

“She told me that… and I told her that it wouldn’t have mattered who the daddy was… that I wouldn’t have wanted to know. I wanted that baby… a family… with her.” Will chuckles without humour. “You know one of the things you hear most when something like that happens? ‘You’re young… you’ll have other chances’. But I don’t think we will.”

Hotch wants to deny it, but the truth is that JJ looks and acts towards Will is all too familiar to him – Haley was like that too, before she left. “Has she talked to anyone?” he tries, and Will shakes his head.

“She says she doesn’t need to… that she’s fine. And I’m so damn afraid of breaking her that I just let it go.” He shakes his head, stares up at the trees overhead. “Trying to ignore the fact that she broke long ago… and there ain’t a damn thing I can do to fix her.”

Hotch is a profiler, a man who watches people for a living, and he wants to tell Will that he is wrong, that that’s not the JJ that he knows.

But then again, he knows that’s the whole problem.

*

They spend two days in New Orleans, two days where JJ assiduously avoids them, and by the end, even Rossi is staring at her with worry in his eyes. They work the case, find a lead, find the child, and when she is safely reunited with her parents, scumbag kidnapper ready to rot in jail for a long, long time, Hotch’s phone rings and it is Garcia. “Are you sure you have the right number?” he asks her, only half in jest. “You usually call Morgan.”

“I know.” He can hear Garcia’s nerves from the other end of the phone and suddenly he knows what this call is about. “But that’s when I’m calling about a case… but I’m calling about JJ.”

“I see.” It’s the safest thing to say without giving away any of his own concerns, and it also gives Garcia tacit permission to continue.

Which, being Garcia, she does. “See, I’ve talked to Morgan, and to Prentiss, and they both told me how she looks and how short she is with everyone, even Reid, and my God, that’s like kicking a puppy, you know? And I know that doesn’t sound like JJ, but they don’t think that she’s happy and I didn’t think she sounded happy, so I called her myself, and she shut me out. She never shuts me out.” The thought occurs to Hotch that it would be more than her life was worth, but he doesn’t say that aloud, not that he could get a word in edgewise with Garcia in full flight. “Which makes me think that things are really, really serious, and someone needs to talk to her.”

“And you think she’ll talk to me?”

“I do.”

From what he knows of JJ’s state of mind and the reasons for it, that’s unlikely, but Garcia doesn’t know what he knows. So he parries with, “Garcia, I don’t know what kind of sway you think I could have with JJ, but I doubt that I’d succeed where any of you failed.” He keeps his voice light, and Garcia’s tone when she replies shocks him.

“That’s crap and you know it… Sir.” There’s a silence as they both digest what she’s just said, and characteristically, she’s the first to recover. “Forgive me… but you spent more time with her than anyone, when she’d brief you on cases… I know she respects you, listens to you…”

“She respects all of us…”

There’s another pause, and the Garcia’s voice, a mere whisper, shocks him again. “And I know about that night.”

Hotch opens his mouth but can’t find his voice. “She told me… made me promise not to breathe a word, and I didn’t, I wouldn’t…” Garcia is breathless, and it sounds to Hotch like she’s near tears. “But my friend is hurting and you’re the only one who can help her and you know the reason why.”

With that life-altering pronouncement, she hangs up, leaving Hotch staring at his cell.

He doesn’t know how long he stares for, but then he picks it up and makes a call.

*

The park is the same one where he talked to Will, but it’s busier now, news that the bogeyman has been caught freeing parents and children alike. He hadn’t thought of that when he suggested it, and if he had, he would have chosen somewhere else, but it hadn’t made any difference to JJ, she’d still agreed to see him. He gets there first, finds the bench she mentioned across from the swing set, and he’s looking at a girl with blonde pigtails being pushed by her mother when he hears JJ’s voice behind him.

“Hi, Hotch.”

He stands, turns to face her, and sees that she’s looking past him, looking at that same little blonde haired girl, and there’s more sadness in her eyes than he can bear. He doesn’t need to be a profiler to know what she’s thinking. He waits until she looks at him before he speaks, tries not to notice how her eyes meet his then almost instantly flick downwards. “I’m glad you came,” he says, because she’s late, and for a little while, he’d thought she’d changed her mind.

JJ smiles without humour. “I almost didn’t,” she admits. “Besides, I thought you’d be getting ready to leave.”

It’s half a question, and he shrugs. “They have my bag… I’m the team leader… they can’t exactly go wheels up without me.”

“Ah, power.” The barest ghost of a smile touches her lips.

“It has its advantages.” He gestures to the bench. “Would you like to sit?”

She shakes her head, pulling her long cardigan tighter around her waist. “I’d rather walk… do you mind?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, turning and moving away from him, and he follows, catching up to walk beside her, a safe distance away. She walks slowly, as if each step is an effort, and he finds it hard to reconcile his memories of her to this wraith like creature inhabiting JJ’s body.

After a long silence, he decides one of them had better speak, and since this was his idea, it should be him. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” he says carefully. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“I nearly didn’t.” The thought crosses his mind that that’s probably the most honest she’s been with him – maybe with anyone – in a very long time. “It’s weird… you being here.”

“You, as in the team? Or me in particular?” He knows from Will – as well as from knowing JJ – that tiptoeing around her is not the way to go. He’s vindicated when she blinks, head turning sharply towards him, surprise clear on her face. She swallows visibly before she answers, and when she speaks, her voice is as slow as her walk, as if she’s trying to make sense of her answer while she’s giving it.

“Both… but especially you. I was trying so hard not to miss you.” The same question as before is on the tip of his tongue, and he bites it back, allowing her to continue. “I told Will. About us.”

“He said.” It doesn’t come as a surprise to her, just elicits a nod; she doesn’t break stride. “He also said that you told him the baby might not be his.”

“The baby wasn’t his.” JJ’s voice is flat, her face expressionless, staring straight ahead, as if she can’t tell that her words have affected him like a punch in the gut.

“You can’t know for-”

“-Sure? I told Will that… but I know, Hotch. I knew from the start.”

There is not a flicker of a doubt in her face, her voice, and he stares at her long enough and hard enough to see. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He’d asked her that question once before, but that was when he’d thought that doubt, not certainty, was the issue.

“What would you have done?”

She’s still using that same expressionless voice and he stops walking, waits until she stops too and turns back to face him before he answers. “I would have been there. Do you think I would have done anything else? JJ…”

“It was one night, Hotch. Where we were both drunk and you’d just signed divorce papers. It’s hardly the beginnings of a beautiful relationship. And Will and I… well, I didn’t know where we were going… but it was more than we had.” She shrugs her shoulders. “And besides… I kept hoping that I was wrong.”

“But you weren’t?” He walks closer to her and they fall into step again.

She shakes her head. “No… I wasn’t. You know the rest… I told Will… let him assume that it was his baby… and then we went to New York.”

“And the world went to hell in a hand basket.”

His comment makes her smile. “Something like that. Will showed up… and I had to tell everyone…tell you.” She looks at him then, blue eyes meeting brown and holding. “You looked right at me, right into my eyes… and you knew. I know you did; I could see it. And you just walked away from me. And then, that night… when Will sent me that note… I asked you if I could leave, if you needed everyone, and you let me go.”

It’s almost an accusation, and he shrugs helplessly. “I thought it was what you wanted… I thought it would make you happy.”

“I wanted you to fight for me.” The words surprise him, and from the dull flush on JJ’s cheeks, they’re a surprise to her as well; at the very least, he doesn’t think she expected to say that much. “But you let me go…and then the explosion… and Kate… and I started to bleed…” Her voice breaks, her eyes close, and he wants more than anything to take her in his arms, but instinct tells him that, for now, that would be the wrong thing to do. She breathes deeply, pulls herself together, and continues. “Anyway, afterwards, I just wanted to get away… so I came here. Kept waiting for it to get better … but it never did. And Will did everything he could… but it just didn’t seem to make a difference.” She shakes her head, looking up to the blue sky. “After everything that happened… I thought leaving the BAU would make things easier…clearer.”

“I know that feeling.” And for a while, for him, it had. Haley was happier, he got to see more of Jack, and he’d had to admit, not have to spend his day surrounded by psychopaths and serial killers didn’t sound like an entirely bad idea. “But it doesn’t let go of you, does it? The BAU.” He might not just be talking about the BAU, but he leaves that up to JJ.

If the raised eyebrow she gives him is anything to go by, she gets his meaning, and to his great surprise, she calls him on it. “Not just the BAU… everything that happened…” She closes her eyes, swallows hard, as memory overwhelms her. “I ran, Hotch… and I thought I could leave everything behind me. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?” He shakes his head, and she gives a bitter half-laugh. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy when I got here first… so did Will. But then it just got worse… I got more miserable and he couldn’t do a thing right… then you guys show up…”

“Reminding you of how you used to be.”

She nods. “I knew it was bad… but these last couple of days just made me realise…” She stops walking, turns to face him and there are tears in her eyes. He can count on the fingers of one hand the times he’s seen JJ cry; even in New York, when things went to hell all around them, she didn’t cry. “I don’t know what to do.”

He doesn’t know if she’s asking him for advice or for his opinion, or just stating a fact, and for a moment, he’s at a loss for words. “JJ… I can’t tell you what to do. But I can tell you that I understand. Maybe not exactly what you’re going through, but a lot of it. I understand why you didn’t want to tell us about you and Will… and I understand why you didn’t want to tell me you were pregnant… and I understand why, after everything that happened, you wanted to get as far away from everything as you possibly could. And if you looked like you were happy, I might even be able to live with that. But I know you, JJ, and I know you’re as far from all right as I’ve ever seen you… you’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, you look like five miles of bad road...” Now he reaches out, places his hands on her shoulders and looks into her eyes. “A few months ago, you wanted me to fight for you, and I didn’t, and I was wrong. And if you let me, I’ll do everything I possibly can to make that up to you. If not… I swear, I’ll leave right now if that’s what you want… what do you want, JJ?”

She’s been crying since he began talking, silent tears running down her cheeks, shaking her shoulders. He wonders how many times she’s cried that way to become so very, very good at it, and he hates himself for not getting in touch with her sooner because he’d known when she was leaving that she wasn’t all right. She opens her mouth, takes in a deep breath, and she can barely choke out the words, “I want to come home, Hotch… I want to come home.”

It’s all he needs to hear to have him closing the arms’ length distance between them, taking her in his arms and holding her tightly. Her head rests against his chest, her arms around him, hands making fists in his jacket, and she cries and cries as if she’s never going to stop. Eventually though, the storm subsides, her shaking lessens to occasional shudders and sniffs before stopping altogether.

She stays holding him though, and he’s not about to let her go, not even when he hears her ask, “Five miles? Really?”

There’s a half-smile in her voice and it makes him smile against the top her head. “Well, maybe two and a half.”

*

He follows her back to her place, sits with her while she calls Will, asks him to come home. He follows her upstairs, watches her as she packs a bag, almost afraid that she’s going to change her mind. She doesn’t take much, just the essentials, and when the front door opens, they are standing in the living room, waiting.

Will is a police detective, a damn good one, and the moment he walks in, Hotch sees his eyes sweep the room, taking in first JJ and her tear-stained cheeks, then Hotch, then the bag beside the couch. A bitter smile touches his lips. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”

JJ looks at him, then at Hotch. “Can you…”

“I’ll wait outside.”

He doesn’t wait for her to finish her sentence, is already heading for the door. He hears, rather than sees, JJ take a step towards Will, hears her begin, “I’m sorry…” before he closes the door behind himself, walks down the drive to the SUV, and waits.

It seems to take forever, but in reality, barely fifteen minutes pass before the door opens again, and JJ and Will walk out. He is carrying her bag, and she is crying again, but the tension around her shoulders that Hotch has seen for the last few days is gone, and her step doesn’t seem as heavy. She gives him a small smile as she passes him, gets into the passenger side of the SUV while Will puts her bag in the back.

“Call me when you get in,” he says, and JJ nods, eyes darting between him and Hotch nervously. Will’s gaze goes to Hotch then, jaw tight, and Hotch wouldn’t blame him if he hauled off and punched him, but that’s not what Will does. Instead, his eyes are serious as he speaks so that only Hotch can hear. “I know I lost her a long time ago… take good care of her.”

He holds out a hand and surprised, Hotch takes it, grips it firmly. “I will.”

*

It’s a short drive to the airport, a short walk to the plane, and when they get to the steps, JJ pauses, bites her lip in apprehension. “You ready for this?” he asks.

Looking up at him, she lifts one eyebrow. “No,” she says, in her best ‘as you already know’ tone. “But I’ll be ok.” For the first time since arriving in New Orleans, it sounds like it might just be the truth, because there’s a peace about her now that wasn’t there before.

“I have no trouble believing that,” he tells her, resting a hand lightly on the small of her back. “Let’s go.”

He lets her go ahead of him, and when she walks into the cabin, there are exclamations of surprise at her appearance. She says nothing for a moment, just stands there, and she looks around at Hotch, he can see she’s near tears. She takes a deep breath, straightening her shoulders, and he says, in as normal a voice as he can muster, “Look who followed me here.”

“You’re coming home?” Reid’s voice – and face – is a mixture of hope and uncertainty, with dawning delight, and when JJ nods, he breaks into a full fledged smile. “That’s great.” If he notices anything amiss with her red eyes and blotchy face, he’s friend enough not to comment, just tilts his head towards the back. “We kept a seat for you.”

The words bring a ghost of a smile to JJ’s face, and Morgan snorts as he stands, heading towards the cockpit. “That’s because he refused to let anyone else sit there.” Reid’s show of faith makes him and JJ dip their heads, and Morgan gently, briefly, touches JJ’s shoulder as he passes her. “Welcome back,” he murmurs, so quietly that only JJ and Hotch can hear him. Then, louder, “I’ll tell them we’re all here.”

JJ watches him go, then meets Hotch’s eyes. Nodding silently, she walks down to the couch at the back of the plane, and he follows her, makes sure that she’s comfortable, even draping a blanket across her lap. Then he sits down beside her and, after a moment’s hesitation, takes her hand in his. She shows not one iota of surprise, just closes her eyes and tilts her head back, letting it fall towards him. She looks so young, he thinks, so fragile, and he’s suddenly very aware of the toll the last few months have taken on her. He vows to himself that he’s going to do whatever it takes to get her back to the way she was, and he knows without having to be told that the rest of the team feel the same way.

Tearing his gaze away from her, he looks up to see that Morgan has returned, that he, Prentiss, Rossi and Reid are either looking at him and JJ, or at each other, each with some combination of an amazed look and knowing smile on their faces. He should be embarrassed, but he’s not, saying only, “You should sit down… we’ll be taking off soon.”

They’re all slow to move, but Reid is the only one who speaks. “Hotch… is she ok?”

Hotch looks down at JJ, but it’s Rossi who answers. “No,” he says, clapping Reid on the shoulder, as much to move the younger man towards his seat as anything else. “But she will be.”

JJ’s lips curl up in a slow smile, and Hotch grins to himself, settling back in his seat, getting comfortable as the plane takes off to bring them home.


End file.
